


Carry On My Wayward Son in a World without You.

by WOL_INDIA



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Mark of Cain, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 12:34:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6116644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WOL_INDIA/pseuds/WOL_INDIA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't go to Lisa, at least not right away. No, there's no way, and there's too much that he doesn't want to face that's coming up on him anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carry On My Wayward Son in a World without You.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction created for Hunter Chronicles by Jui Pranjape

He doesn’t go to Lisa; well at least not right away, there is no way, no freaking way. He can’t bring himself to go to her door, see her big brown sympathetic eyes or suffer the comforting embraces and words and patient hospitality she’s sure to show. As much as he wants to do what’s asked of him, wants so bad, just so he’s done something right…But he can’t.He doesn’t know. He isn’t sure. Nothing makes sense anymore. Maybe shit never really had, but it sure as hell doesn’t know. _“Sure as hell...”_ But anyways he had said goodbye to Bobby; had felt the word choke like _‘I’m sorry’_ as he forced it out. Bobby had understood though. Let it slide. Dean is now off the hook and he’s heading off the rez. It’s inevitable, really, and Bobby knows. Bobby always freaking knows. Of course, it is the default setting for Winchester coping; Sam did the same, not so long time ago. John Winchester had done it until his end. Run, so the shit, the hurt can’t catch you. So Bobby had let him go, let him go with a tight hug and an _“If you ever need anything, son...”_ and no more. Dean had smiled tightly, more a pull of lips across his teeth. The offer was there, in the air. Like to stay that way, like so many things…only certain things in this fucked up; oh but saved from the total apocalypse, thanks to the Winchesters; World, it seemed was his baby, and even she’s a blessing and a curse.        

Cas is fucking shitty at goodbyes. It shouldn’t be a surprise, especially with the reinstatement and all. Castiel is (was?) the only friend Dean Winchester’s ever had. The kind of person he could count on, surprisingly, could talk to (even he sometimes was a freaking brick wall, or didn’t always get Dean’s expressions), but also, could trust, who wasn’t family, like Sammy and Bobby, Ellen, Jo…shit...Cas was around and went through a lot with Dean, for Dean, if he feels up to admitting it. But Cas is an angel again and feels the need to be Honorary Heavenly Sherriff; and vanish when the moment is heavy. Leave Dean alone with his deep thinky thoughts that really are near the last things he wants on his mind. He wants nothing on his mind right now. Or ever; ever would be a great deal. No fuckin’ Castiel, Angel of the Lord, not Bobby, not a single goddamned thing, not a fuckin’ thought, definitely not.         

It isn’t ever going to his ever is it? Why did he ever expect it to? So Dean forces blankness on himself. Makes his mind a space of white noise as he drives, alone. Memories and thoughts try and invade, and he forces them away, bleaches and smudges them, tossing them back toward his broken mental lockbox. He wants to flip on the radio, maybe even rustle up a cassette. Drown the onslaught with Led Zepp, or have Metallica pound them into submission, but simultaneously the idea of hearing it makes his stomach knot and twist, burn. He keeps his eyes instead firmly on the road, as much as he can, trying not to glance at the dial, or the gleam of the chucked iPod dock in the passenger floorboard. Still there after all this time. He watches the road. The asphalt is monotonous, blank, it doesn’t tell a story, just an open canvas for whatever happens, pointed forward, not back, it doesn’t hold memories he wants to deny. Just like a road, just like every other….just like no other. It’s constant and everything and nothing.          

He finally concedes to his body’s need to hang it up for a while just outside of nowhere, somewhere. Reluctantly checks into a motel. He feels a slew of emotions he ignores, the only neutral option being just to lie down on the side of the road somewhere. Dean doubts if he ever will get himself back up from there. The bored night clerk slides him the key to room 13 and as he shoulders his duffel and trudges toward the room, his reserves start to slip with exhaustion. The details hold back, waiting for their opportune moment to strike, but the weight of it. It presses down on him, in on him, his step laden with it, throat tight and chest clenching. It’s straight fucked up that just the thought hurts so damn bad, he can stand physical pain, a helluva lot more than most, a helluva lot more than this.

It’s worse than –Oh-Kay so not going there; No.As bad as –NO.Just like where –Dean grits his teeth, bites the inside of his cheek, just breaks skin, a counterpoint to his pain, a distraction so he can forcibly direct himself away from that, there (he can handle at the edge of his thoughts, hovering, gnawing…) and opens the door. It’s too quiet, too still inside; the only break in it the sound of his compulsory measured breathing. He slings his duffel hard at the bed, not even consciously realizing that he is trying to break the suffocating quiet.Quiet. Quiet like that awful moment the ground sealed after Sam-with Lucifer-as copilot and Michael-wearing Adam had fallen into the cage. The quiet like that instant of a moment Sam – his Sam, Sammy, had looked him in the eye.

He could barely see him, one eye swollen completely shut and other well on the way to the same, offering him the meager visibility of blurred silver. His face was a huge painful mess, every point bloodied and bruised and throbbing thumped and burned in the shape of his brother’s knuckles. That hadn’t been his brother though, wasn’t Sam, that was Sam, shaggy hair whipping in the wind, in the deafening roar of this mute moment. That was Sammy, standing there, the puppy-doggish pleading but not-quite-sorry face he had. The last view Dean had of him before he’d left for Stanford.Sammy was leaving him, deliberately, again. ‘Coz he had to.And Dean didn’t want him to, didn’t stop him.Shit.Dean splashed his face with water in the tiny bathroom, forsaking the open room. This glorified closet has the illusion of containment, and he needs to contain himself.

He grips the edges of the sink hard enough to imprint, head bowed. He meant to collect himself, pull it together, but that sucking hollow in his chest has opened up, a vacuum for his existence and will, very much like Lucifer’s cage, but within him. When he thought he had lost everything, all that was left, pitiful handful that it was, that mattered to him gone, leaving him resoundingly alone, this sucking hollowness had open opened up in him.He had been so close. Almost let it all go, just caved in.Dean meets his own gaze in the mirror. Intense cat-green eyes stare back, blank and haunted. Haunting, shining almost translucent grey-green in the harsh light. Open wide, set in his unmarked face, the only trace of his recent hell in the smudges beneath the eyes and his eyes themselves. Not a scratch, or gouge, or a bruise and swelling left to illustrate what he felt within, illustrate just what he had given and lost and fought.Cas had wiped it all away when he had miraculously returned, hopped up on a new and restored angel mojo. He’d taken it from Dean.

Again, just like with Hell.The thought scorches sour-like acid at the back of his throat, twisting in his stomach. Fucker. He had to believe that maybe, maybe if he had a physical trace – he could take this. It wouldn’t be just all in his head. It’d fucking be real, and it’d fucking hurt, pain that he could manage, control, see.Fuck!It was the shards crackling as they hit the floor that roused Dean back into the moment and what had just happened. Blood trickling warmly across his balled right hand, familiar, comforting. He’d put his fist though the damn perfect mirror, right into his damned falsely perfect reflection. The shards scattered like shrapnel, twinkling across the dingy tiles and dotted with crimson-sliding rose red within the basin. Some glass still within the metal frame. Green eyes gaze back at him, distorted, disjointed.Fractured.But now there’s something outside matching his within.…It’s not enough. Not by a far fucking cry. And he can’t contemplate, can’t fathom what will be. Like every hope he’s had, it’s probably something he’d lose anyway.


End file.
